Snapshots: Giles (1/1)
by Northlight
Summary: Random bits and pieces of Giles' life.


_ Title: Snapshots: Giles (1/1)  
Summary: glimpses into Giles' life.  
Rating: PG13.  
Disclaimer: Joss owns all.  
Date: Feb. 2-3, 2001._

* * *

He is Rupert Giles. He was, is, and shall always be a Watcher. 

The children cannot begin to understand. They see him, and they snicker behind their hands. 'Watcher' is equated in their minds with Britain, tweed, ancient books, and stuffy men out of tune with the modern world. More recently, they think of Watchers - the others, never he - and see British and stuffy, but dangerous, now. They see men and women with a narrow understanding of what their duty allows, minds unable and unwilling to accept new possibilities. 

It is said, that long ago, his kind did more than watch. They saw the world and strove to shape it to their own desires, with little care of the lives they commanded. And as their pride grew, so too did their care for those they were promised to protect did diminish. And they saw not the powers of Gods nor the great powers of the universe, but that within their own mortal manipulations. And so did they become gods within their own eyes. 

It was as such for years, until the powers of creation themselves grew wearied and angered by the mortals' posturing. And they swept away the power the mortals had wielded. No longer shapers of human destiny, but Watchers. 

They are as ancient as human life itself. They are a people, a culture, unique. They spread through the world, with their myths and their traditions, their duty and their destiny. 

He was born, and in his blood was the memory of a thousand generations. The first touch he felt was that of the Seer, searching his past and his future, claiming him as a Watcher. And she whispered into his ear, myth and wisdom and destiny, a ritual roll of words and sighs whose meaning has been lost to time. 

They placed him in his mother's arms. He imagines now that joy must have been tempered by knowledge. His parents were Watchers. They _knew_. He does not remember, but he feels it, and knows that his mother wept over him. 

...~*~... 

Sophia. He met her once when he was but a young child. She has been burnt into his memory, has seared his soul. She was immense to his young eyes, and the Rupert-who-is looks into his past and sees a little girl. Her face was pinched, dark brown eyes wide and glinting with tears. He had focused on her mouth, wide eyed and fascinated, eyeing the blood there with fearful curiosity. 

Mother and Father were in the kitchen. Father sat at the table, his regular chair pulled out, across from Sophia. Mother was wetting a washcloth, handed it to Sophia. Her face was one familiar to Rupert - she wore it when he had fallen out of the giant tree behind their home just last month - but somehow more, now. Rupert stood out of sight, watching the back of his father's head. His father's hair was dark brown, short cropped, and his head was gently cocked to one side. Concerned. Serious. 

Sophia's voice was soft, pretty, but the sound of it made him swallow hard and inch further out of sight. The Rupert-who-is remembers the tone of her voice, though words have long since faded from memory, and he knows that she was hurt and terrified and so very... _tired_. She held the damp washcloth against her torn lower lip, drew it away from her mouth and looked at the smear of blood. And she had shuddered, a long, drawn out movement that rocked her entire body. 

He had turn and ran, scrambling up the stairs, flinging himself back into bed. He had drawn his sheets high up over his shoulders, had pressed his pillow tight over his head, trying to drown out the murmur of voices drifting upstairs. They chased him into his nightmares. And when he woke up the next morning, Sophia was gone. 

He remembers his father's voice, his words: 

"We never speak about it. 

We watch. We classify and rate and write. Words and action, life and death are meticulously laid down on paper. Neat, clean words. We live words. Theirs - old as civilization itself. Our own - a message to those yet to come. 

And with all our words, we do not speak of that which most consumes us. They writhe and rot inside us, those words and thoughts and knowledge. Watch their eyes and you'll see." 

He watched and saw and wished he hadn't. The man wasn't very much older than his father. Rupert knew him by reputation, had claimed the man as a role model. William King, Watcher to an active Slayer. King came home at the height of summer. Alone. And he would not speak. But his eyes wouldn't stop. And they lead him into a room and left him there with his memories and his writhing, rotting, silent words. 

Most Watchers didn't live much past their Slayer's death. They died with the girls they had trained and raised and loved. Or they came home, bent and broken in heart and mind and soul and withered away in silence. 

And he thought his mother must have cried over him. 

...~*~... 

There were already scars on his body when he ran away. 

He met Ethan, and Ethan was like no one he had ever known. Ethan had no ancient bloodline, no destiny, no nightmares drilled into his mind and beat into his flesh. Ethan had no concern but himself. And that had seemed wonderful. 

Months, and he had lived with Ethan and the others. And he had drowned himself in their flesh. Had let his mind rot and had flung his responsibility away from himself, hard and furious. He had played with magic, perverted his knowledge into nothing more than an amusement. 

He hadn't been able to move as Randall screamed. 

...~*~... 

He tightens his grip on his teacup, and a sharp stab of agony makes itself known. Giles grunts, grinds his teeth, lowers his cup to the counter. The dark liquid sloshes, cascading over the rim of the cup. It splatters against the counter-top, lazily expands. 

His fingers are bent slightly, older bones slower to heal. They look like they've been broken: snap, snap, _snap_. They look like remembered agony. He didn't scream over his fingers. He listened to the crack of finger after finger breaking, swallowed his bile, and did not scream. Not then. 

The children look at him and think of books and tea and tweed. And his trainers looked at him and saw a man who must not break, who must lay his body out for the monsters for the sake of his Slayer. They didn't call it torture, then, and he refuses to do so now. He was locked in a cell, bound tight, starving and his naked body splintering and screaming with agony. The room stank of bile and excrement and blood. And they had watched and jotted down notes and clucked their tongues in disapproval when he began to scream and beg. 

Angelus knew tricks that Giles' trainers hadn't. And he'd screamed, then. But he hadn't spoken. Because he was a _Watcher_ and Buffy depended upon him, and the world depended on him and he would _not_ break for a _monster_ such as this! 

Giles falls back into himself, panting and crying, and he suddenly hates Buffy. All that he has done for the girl, and she can not acknowledge that he has reason to despise Angel. And he is hurt and terrified and so very... tired. 

Tea is bleeding out across his counter. Giles ignores it. He suddenly finds that he can not walk, and shuffles instead, finds one of his liquor stashes. The bottle is familiar and friendly against his lips, and he drinks deep and easily. 

...~*~... 

He lost his virginity to a Watcher two years his senior. Her name was Carmen, and her face and body are but a vague blur in his mind these days when he cares to remember her. He did not love her. He barely even knew her. Their trainers introduced them, compared psych profiles and bloodlines behind the scene. They were provided with a key to a rented room, use of one of the cars, and a break from study and training. 

He didn't want this to be but another part of his training, keeping him under control, keeping pure blood mingling with pure. She pushed him back on the bed, straddled his body, kissed him, and he hadn't known how to rebel. So he'd locked his arms around her and kissed her back. 

And maybe he actually does have a child somewhere in the world. But he prefers not to think of that. And he usually doesn't. Giles has had a great deal of practice at editing his thoughts, of diverting their flow when his mind threatens to head into difficult territory. 

Jenny was the first woman he thought of sharing his life with. There was a part of him, buried deep and well, that sometimes longed for a wife and children. He had held Jenny against his body, nose in her dark hair, inhaling the scent of her. She had laughed and teased him, forced him to expand his boundaries, and she had made him feel like more than a Watcher, a fussy librarian, the old man that Buffy and the other children seemed so determine to remind him he was. 

He came home to music, champagne, and rose petals scattered on the stairs. And his dreams had cracked, tumbling around him to shatter at his feet. There was no home and wife and children for him, he remembered. He is a Watcher, and only a Watcher, until his superiors decide he is more. 

Memories wait to claim him. His father died a continent away. Giles found his way home, the feel of the demon still grimy in his thoughts. His mother had been crying, and she had loved her husband. Giles hadn't been sure because he had grown up to understand that their kind was subject to the Council and personal desire was rarely a factor in the decisions made about one's life. His mother had wept. And wept. And he knew that being a Watcher meant agony for all those who loved you. 

Olivia is a beautiful woman, intelligent, charming. And it is a terrible thing to say, but what they had was fun, but he is glad that she is gone. He thinks that he loved her, or could, but experience has taught him the futility of believing in happy endings. Had she stayed, he knows that he would have broken her heart, or lead her somewhere far darker. 

...~*~... 

His mother died. He couldn't go home. He had to be in Sunnydale for Buffy's eighteenth birthday. His mother would have understood. Giles wishes that she wouldn't have had to. 

...~*~... 

They tried to take away what he was. Quentin Travers, his face a study in disappointment, "you're fired." He wonders where Travers was when King came home broken and lost. He wonders if Travers has ever seen the youth and beauty in a Slayer as she moves, the desperate sense of unfairness as she stares into death at the age of sixteen. He wonders if Travers was locked in a room, dark and small, stripped and chained and tested for the Slayer he could potentially find himself training. 

Buffy hated him, then. He had wanted to hate her in return. He had wanted to look back at his nightmare, find the righteousness in bringing one to the breaking point in order to test one's ability. Giles looked back and remembered how he had hurt; how a little piece of him had been left - blood streaked and screaming - tied to that chair even after they released him; how he had hated his trainers and his duty and his destiny. He found himself the monster he had thought them to be. And he hated himself. 

He went home that night and drank until the world faded to black. 

He spent a year lost and useless. He was a joke. Unneeded. A man with a duty and destiny suddenly unemployed and unemployable, not even wanted by the woman to whom he had devoted his life. His supply of liquor dwindled rapidly. He would have raged against Buffy and her infatuation with the Initiative and Professor Walsh had he not thought himself unworthy to be her guide. 

...~*~... 

Giles plays the guitar and sings. He has fans in the small establishment he regularly performed at. He smiles, remembering Willow's enthusiasm, even though he had hated to find the children in his audience. Buffy would have shuddered and said that it was gross. 

...~*~... 

He arrived in Sunnydale and found himself a teacher, a mentor, and a father. He has children, and they are as much his as if his blood flows within them. Buffy and Xander and Willow - he loves them with a fierceness that surprised him. And suddenly, it was not a Slayer that he had committed himself to, that he should be willing to die for. It was a young woman with determination and intelligence and humour. It was a shy young woman with delightful quirks and a strong core of loyalty. It was a wounded young man, beaten down but determined to prove himself. 

His family expanded, and he was so full of love and the need to protect them and be needed by them that he found himself paralyzed by his emotions. He thinks that they know he loves them. One day, he will tell them. They deserve that. He deserves that. 

They laugh at him, sometimes. Maybe he deserves that, too. Maybe he needs that. He will look at himself through their eyes, and maybe he shall finally be able to find something to laugh about himself. Giles knows that he does not laugh much. Laughter is harder for him than is anger, or even tears. Laughter is lightness and freedom and joy. 

...~*~... 

He dreams. 

There is a story that claims that the words whispered into a child's ear by the Seer upon his birth are that child's dreams. That those dreams are the child's future. 

His dreams are huge and dark and terrifying. Sometimes he dreams of the past, and wakes with tears on his cheeks. Sometimes... sometimes, he dreams of something else. There is death in his head. It lives and breaths and takes those he loves and twists them into bloody shards of bones and quivering globs of flesh. 

Sometimes, Giles dreams his own death. 

Often, he dreams of Buffy's death. It is slow and painful and Buffy dies feeling and thinking and _knowing_. And she is still so dreadfully young. She looks at him, and he knows that she is seeing the man who took her future away from her. 

He prays. 

Giles had not truly prayed in years. Religion and God had seemed a dream, a cruel story meant to give people hope but which always ends up proving hollow. He woke up with Buffy screaming and dying in his head and heaved his horror into the toilet. His forehead rested against cool porcelain, and he prayed. 

Buffy smiles at him, bright and young, and he nearly weeps. 

He is a Watcher. This is his duty. This is his destiny. 

He dreams. He prays. 

~end~ 


End file.
